The increasing speed and complexity of circuitry implies a significant increase in power consumption. Further, power consumption can be a critical factor for some power sources, such as battery powered devices, automotive systems, and the like. Various techniques have been employed to reduce power consumption.
One technique to reduce power consumption involves manually identifying and replacing components with fewer components in order to reduce power consumption. This technique can be effective for relatively simple circuitry and systems, but becomes costly and time consuming for larger scale systems. Further, the manual replacement can introduce errors into the system.
Another technique to reduce power consumption is to employ various design techniques to mitigate power consumption. The design techniques can reduce power consumption by incorporating lower power consumption design techniques. However, this technique doesn't consider implementation and usage patterns and may not adequately reduce power.
Still another technique to reduce power consumption involves performing software system traces while monitoring an external power supply to a system. Microcontroller systems introduce additional complexities and power usage patterns. The current or power supplied to the system is monitored while a software trace is performed. This technique can identify time periods in which the entire system is consuming large amounts of power, but may not provide enough information to identify power reduction opportunities. Further, the measured power values are low pass filtered due to the presence of capacitors at the supply terminals. Thus, short periods of power consumption or spikes can be missed.